Business and Finance news

The productivity of U.S. workers increased in the fourth quarter at a faster pace as companies sought to pare costs to preserve profits.
The measure of employee output per hour rose at an unrevised 2.6 percent annual rate after a third-quarter gain of 2.3 percent, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Labor […]

In an impressive comeback from bankruptcy, General Motors last year posted its first annual profit since 2004.
GM posted net income of $4.7 billion last year, fueled by strong sales in China and the U.S. as the global auto market began to recover. It earned $2.89 per share on revenue of $135.6 billion.
It was the company’s […]

Panera Bread Co. has agreed to pay $5.75 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by shareholders who alleged the chain of bakery cafes misled investors about the success of its Crispani pizza, a product Panera discontinued in 2008.
Western Washington Laborers-Employers Pension Trust filed the lawsuit in January 2008 in the U.S. District Court […]

Consumers eager to get their hands on Apple Inc.

China may report a $20.8 billion trade surplus for December, adding to pressure for yuan gains nine days before Presidents Hu Jintao and Barack Obama meet to discuss issues including global economic imbalances.
The surplus will exceed $20 billion for the sixth time in seven months, taking the full-year total to $191 billion, according […]

Six banks have repaid government bailouts worth a combined $2.66 billion, the Treasury department said Wednesday.
The banks are returning taxpayer money that they received in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon National Corp., Wintrust Financial Corp., Susquehanna Bancshares Inc., Heritage Financial Corp. and The Bank of Kentucky Financial Corp. all paid […]

Emirati telecommunications provider Etisalat says it still wants to buy a 46 percent of Kuwaiti rival Zain despite speculation it might consider taking a smaller stake.
Etisalat last month agreed to acquire the stake for $12 billion from a group of investors led by Kuwaiti conglomerate Kharafi Group, but the deal has faced opposition from some […]

Walmart is going green in its Chinese factories. George Soros is exploring investments in the restoration of drained peatlands in Indonesia. Denmark is joining South Korea in a new fund to transform developing economies.
As delegates to the latest U.N. climate talks struggled to come up with a modest pair of global warming accords, governments, businesses […]

Oracle Corp.’s courtroom clash with archenemy SAP AG has paid off handsomely.
A jury on Tuesday ordered SAP to pay $1.3 billion _ more than half of its total profit last year _ for a subsidiary’s skullduggery in stealing a stockpile of software and customer-support documents from password-protected Oracle websites.
The German software company was caught off […]

Republicans won a smashing victory in this month’s U.S. national elections; no issue resonated more with the party’s base than President Barack Obama’s health-care legislation.
The House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” vowed “to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.” The […]